despre imaginea lui Cioran

Revista The New Republic, a publicat un review la cartea scriitoarei Marta Petreu, despre Cioran, recent tradusa in limba engleza sub titlul de “An Infamous Past”.

In timp ce subiectul este cartea Martei Petreu, recenzia face si o comparatie critica cu cartea lui Laignel-Lavastine, “Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco – L’oubli du fascisme”.

Recenzia este scrisa de Joseph Frank, profesor emerit in literatura comparata, scriitor, ... care l-a cunoscut si a colaborat cu Cioran.
Scriitoarele nu sint prea entuziasmate una de cealalta (printre alte controverse au existat si acuzatii de plagiarism ...), insa prof. Joseph Frank le admira pe amindoua.

Cunoscind toata controversa generata de cartea lui Lavastine in Romania, admitind anumite imprecizii de detaliu, Joseph Frank conclude ca “The great value of Laignel-Lavastine's book is her thorough investigation of the Romanian background, and in a much larger framework than the one provided by Petreu.”

Insa, ... si aici recenzia lui mi-a provocat o mare placere, cartea Martei Petreu este valoroasa acolo unde cea a lui Lavastine are o mare lipsa, prin faptul ca aduce o corectie binemeritata, nedreptatilor si prejudecatilor cu care Lavastine prezinta figura si gindirea lui Cioran.

Aceasta lipsa de incredere a lui Lavastine, prejudecatile pe care ea alege sa le puna inaintea cuvintelor si mai ales a faptelor lui Cioran, constitue o mare slabiciune a cartii lui Lavastine, si recenzia ataca destul de bine acest aspect.

Citeva spicuiri:

... Cioran was also in Paris at the outbreak of the war and decided to return to Bucharest in the autumn of 1940, though he, too, eliminated these months from accounts of his life. The reason is quite simple: he arrived when the Iron Guard had practically taken over the government; and on the very day that it was committing the atrocities already mentioned, he spoke on the radio with ecstatic praise for the "Legion" (as the movement was also called). "Codreanu," he said, had "instilled honor in a nation of slaves; he has given a sense of pride to a spineless herd." He also published several articles along the same lines and, preparing his return to France, obtained an appointment as cultural attaché to the Romanian embassy in Vichy.

Cioran took up his new post in March 1941, but broke all records for the brevity of his service, which lasted only two and a half months (subl.mea). Meanwhile, he managed once again to obtain a study grant with the help of his former benefactor, now at the Collège de France, and returned to live and write in occupied Paris.
During these years, he spent a good deal of time with another ex-Romanian intellectual of Jewish origin, Benjamin Fondane (actually Vecsler, sau Fundoianu), who had become a fairly well-known literary critic and poet through his works in French. In a letter to his parents in 1946, cited by Petreu, Cioran writes that:

"[Fondane] proved to be more gentle and more generous than all my 'Christian' friends taken together.... In the long run, all ideas are absurd and false; only the people are there, regardless of their origin or religion(subl.mea)."

When Fondane was finally denounced and arrested, Cioran went with Jean Paulhan to plead for his release. Surprisingly enough, they were successful in his case; but Fondane refused to leave without his sister, who had also been taken into custody, and they both perished in Auschwitz.

There can be little doubt that, as Laignel-Lavastine notes, "the arrest of Fondane shook Cioran profoundly," and left an indelible impression on his ideas and his values. He later wrote an admiring essay about his friend, and in addition helped Fondane's wife to re-edit his works after the war as well as to complete an important unfinished book on Baudelaire. He also wrote an article asking that Fondane's name be included among those deported writers whose names were inscribed in the Pantheon....
...
There can be no question that, unlike Eliade, the issue of his previous fascism and anti-Semitism tormented the complicated, involuted, self-questioning Cioran, whose thought was always directed toward undermining all of mankind's certainties, including his own.
The analysis of the postwar Cioran given here is the most complex and controversial in Laignel-Lavastine's book. He is depicted as both evading any overt responsibility for his past and also, "unlike Eliade," weighed down by feelings "inseparable from a desire for expiation and a sense of diffuse guilt ... [an] 'oppressive sensation' with which he admits sometimes awakening in the morning, 'as if I bore the weight of a thousand crimes.'"

The same problem arises when she comes to Cioran's attitude toward the Jews. When, for example, a new edition of his most anti-Semitic book, The Transfiguration of Romania, was published in Romania, he insisted that the chapter on the Jews be eliminated, along with a number of remarks about them scattered through the text:

"I completely renounce a very large part [of the book] which stems from the prejudices of the past, and I consider as inadmissible certain remarks about the Jews," he wrote to a friend.
Nothing could be more explicit. Even more, in one of his later French books he included a section on the Jews called "Un peuple de solitaires" ("A Solitary People") that was hailed as philo-Semitic.
...
Moreover, Cioran continually identifies his own situation with that of the Jews, writing that "their drama [that of the Jews] is mine." In 1970 he mused that "I lacked an essential condition fully to realize myself: to be Jewish."
.....
This obsessive self-identification with the Jews is interpreted as "the reversed expression of the same psycho-pathological phenomenon" that had earlier led to Cioran's worst excesses. Perhaps so; but to glorify the Jews instead of vilifying them surely indicates some sort of change.
Also, the objection is made that while Cioran often expresses regret about his errors of the past, he never does so except in general terms, without attempting to explain why they are now rejected.
...
Petreu is much more affirmative on this issue, and cites someone who visited Cioran during his last days, when he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease:
"From his hospital bed, desperately trying to overcome the symptoms of his disease, Cioran stumblingly told his guest: 'I ... am not ... an ... anti- ... Semite.’”

La sfirsitul articolului, prof. Joseph Frank tine sa adauge:

Let me add my personal testimony at this point. During my years in Paris I met Cioran and saw him on a number of occasions, and we had a good many conversations (particularly but not exclusively about Russian literature, in which he took a passionate interest). Whatever the twists and turns of his troubled conscience, the brilliantly sardonic, self-mocking, and fascinating personality that I knew could not have been a conscious manipulator who would set out deliberately to deceive.

intreg articolul, foarte informativ de altfel, il gasiti aici .